Many of you have undoubtedly read J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, that delightful tale of Bilbo Baggins's adventures as he tries to help some fellow companions of Middle Earth.  Twisting and turning through the magical landscape of this imaginary land, the tale takes Bilbo and his cohorts to some remarkable places.  Bilbo of course had very little idea of what to expect; although he knew a bit about the terrain outside , he had never really ventured far into it.  And he only went because he felt much pressure and cajoling from the wizard Gandalf and his eventual companions.
     We are all, I suspect, a bit like Bilbo.  We may not think we live in a magical world, but in fact we do.  Ours is a world that overflows with mystery and intrigue, a world rife with secrets and unpredictability, a world that we are constantly seeking to unwrap and unfold.  And unlike Bilbo, we did not decide to live in it.  We are just here.
     So, the existentialists say, we live by making choices, by making choices that authenticate us, choices that, for a flashing moment, lift us out of the anonymity of a world in which we did not ask to be.  What else can we do?  We step into the magic, we burrow into the mystery.  We live and, one day, we die.
     Death is mentioned little in Middle Earth, but it is achingly present in ours.  So we press on, planning the journey, embarking on the trek, hiking and traveling until the day when we can hike and travel no more.  Can we--should we--do anything less?
     Of course not.  Yet for the existentialists, life has no meaning.  There is no ultimate point.  There is no Gandalf, there is no God.  So we are without a reason as to why we journey through this life and world, and live in, as many have pointed out, existential limbo, stepping into the magic without a clue as to why it is so.
     Magic is only magic if we know why it is.